Men who are more comfortable around women

[Sunnyindisposition]

I work in a reasonably gender balanced workplace. People socialise together to the extent they want to. I have become friendly with a male colleague. There is genuinely nothing romantic in it despite us both being single. I don't even know if he's straight or not and neither of us are in a relationship. He is a likeable guy and talks quite a lot in an amicable non gossipy way with a range of colleagues but he does seem to find it easier to connect with women. I spoke to him about this and he said he was shy around women for many years having attended a single sex school, however he always felt he didn't fit in among men due to the competitiveness and certain macho attitudes. He does have some male friends and the men at work seem to quite like him too. He has a comfortable kind of feeling about him and a way of putting you at your ease, plus he's very softly spoken. Just wondered if you'd come across people like this.

My dp is like this. It's wonderful. I've made many lovely female friends via him. Including some of his exes who are all lovely ladies.

I love being around men like this as they make me feel safe and comfortable. They tend not to act in an entitled way, to think before they speak and so on.

Some assume my dp is gay as he's always well dressed at work and is a gentle solicitous person, prefers to hang out with the female side of the room when it's all couples etc. But at the same time he has male friends and enjoys many traditionally male pursuits. He's just v comfortable with himself and doesn't worry too much about gender norms.

Bees your DP sounds lovely and a bit like my friend. The gender norms thing is key, I think

I know a man like this, an much older chap, not my partner or anything. I think he just "appreciates" women in an old-fashioned kind of way (he's not British btw). I am not sure any further why he feels like this, I think he probably alluded once or twice to the competitive BS of lots of men?

I would like to think I am like this. I went to an all boys school, played all the men's sports, rugby, cricket, national team schoolboys hockey ( not in the UK). Never had a problem with locker room banter. There always the so called 'alpha' types who were really actually pretty insecure. I try to look after myself and am still pretty fit. I am still friends with all my exes, even if things did not work out between us. However, I always was the one the women would come to when they were having issues. I sometimes felt like the ubiquitous 'gay' friend. This is actually how I met my wife of 20+ years. She was dropped by someone who I was friends with (6'3" muscular, blonde jock, also engaged to someone in another country, neither of us knew until then.) We talked until the early hours and I helped her getting her issues resolved. We discovered we had a lot in common. The problem for me seemed that the majority of women wanted the bad boy, the hunk and the brainless gorilla. I think the difference is that some men will tell you anything to get something from you, whereas I believe I always told the truth, with no hidden agenda, even if I find you attractive. I have women i barely know tell me really personal things, and they trust me to not tell anyone else and to give objective advice. It's not a gender thing, imho, you will always find someone who you can talk about anything with. This is also not a pat on the back for me, I do sometimes wish I had been the bad boy. I think that I just matured emotionally long before my friends.

I am male. My oldest friend is female(40+ years) i have older sisters, grew up rurally so social life was pony club which was mostly girls who were often better riders than the boys and won most of the competions, shared houses at uni as only male and also when i started work. I have always generally preferred the company of women. And no i am not a lothario who tries to sleep with every woman i meet!

It's not that uncommon. My DH is a bit like bees. He's not into traditional male pursuits (e.g. football) and his oldest friend from Uni is a woman. If we go out with other couples we know he'll spend as much time talking to the women in the group as the men. Also usually pretty well dressed.

My older son is like this. He is 21 and I think people might assume (wrongly) that he is gay, but he just finds women really easy to talk to. He has always conformed more to "girl" stereotypes, even when he was really little- very verbal, loved drawing, not particularly active, never liked playing with cars or guns or action figures.

Now he is a lovely man, (though not particularly well dressed).

My DH is a lot like this. He isn't very traditionally masculine, really hates the alpha male bullshit stuff and between us we have a very mixed group of friends and don't tend to split into male and female. So he has equally good male and female friends.

All the positive comments here are great but I find it really interesting that when I've said I feel more comfortable with men than women I get an entirely different response on here.

My best friend of 36 years ( ) is like this. People gravitate towards him as he is charming, funny and gracious. He is gay and gets on with both sexes easily. DH always says "there's three of us in this marriage". Said in total jest as they get on like a house on fire

All the positive comments here are great but I find it really interesting that when I've said I feel more comfortable with men than women I get an entirely different response on here.

Yes, that's because men already have a huge amount of social power compared to women, so you can safely say you don't like to be around them without causing much offence.

Women have less social cache, and generally, women's bad behavior tends to be a response to men running the world (e.g. women tend to be competitive and bitchy because they know that they are competing for limited social cache), so it does feel a bit mean to talk about how much one hates being around women. On a deep level people tend to sense that women have a shit deal, so don't make it worse by saying you don't like them.

It's sort of like how it's OK to say white people are boring or awful, but saying the same of black people / Jews / what-have-you makes people feel really uncomfortable. It's because white people already have a disproportionate amount of power in society and they can "afford" to be talked down a bit. Whereas minorities have much less power and already suffer for it.

(I prefer the company of men myself, and have noticed the same response if I mention that, but, I do understand why)

One of my good friends is similar. He went to a mixed school though, he was never shy with women, he does have male friends but he just gets on better with women.

I find it interesting how often women-friendly men are assumed to be gay.